Micha Ullman (* 1939)Niemand (No one), 1990

The Israeli artist Micha Ullman became famous for his memorial to the book burnings on Bebelplatz, which can only be seen through a little window in the pavement: an empty library. With “Niemand” he placed a hermetically closed cube of emptiness and silence in the noisy bustle of the street. Blocked openings suggest an accessibility that is closed off: a place of recollection and remembrance. Placed across from the Jewish Museum, it stands as the antipode to the synagogue memorial at the opposite end of this axis through the city near the Axel-Springer-Straße. And there is of course also a close, substantial link to Gunter Demnig’s “Stolpersteine” which are also an insistent reminder of the deported Jews who lived in this neighbourhood.